becoming

To bad I won’t be in town for this. But if you are Christian living in Toronto or within GTA, I strongly encourage you to go!

From EmpiredRemixed:

On Friday November 14th [New date], we will be screening the Ordinary Radicals film at the Bloor Cinema in downtown Toronto. Director Jamie Moffett will be with us in the audience, and ready to answer your questions after the film.

Jamie compiled much of the footage from this film while touring with Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw on their Jesus for President tour, including their stop in Toronto at the end of June.

The film features interviews with: Becky Garrison, Shane Claiborne, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Rob Bell, John Perkins, Brooke Sexton, Michael Heneise, St. Margret Mckenna, Logan Laituri, Zack Exley, Aaron Weiss and our very own Brian Walsh.

You can purchase tickets for this event here.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the film:

In the margins of the United States (and Canada), there lives a revolutionary Christianity. One with a quiet disposition that seeks to do “small things with great love,” and in so doing is breaking 21st Century stereotypes surrounding this 2000 year old faith. “The Ordinary Radicals” is set against the modern American political and social backdrop of the next Great Awakening. Traveling on a tour to promote the book “Jesus for President”, Shane Claiborne and a rag-tag group of “ordinary radicals” interpret Biblical history and its correlation with the current state of American politics. Sharing a relevant outlook for people with all faith perspectives, director Jamie Moffett examines this growing movement.

As Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw write in the book, “This is not a set of political suggestions for the world; this is about invoking and embodying the alternative. All of this is an invitation to join a peculiar people- those with no king but God, who practice jubilee economics and make the world new. This is not the old-time religion of going to heaven; this is about bringing heaven to the world.”

[link]

Archbishop of York, John Sentamu’s recent comment on poverty and the global economy:

Tomorrow morning I will attend a meeting to launch a campaign of ‘Education for All’ as part of the global effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including the eradication of global poverty by 2015. Of course for such a target to be achieved there needs to be stable financial systems. There needs to be stable financial systems. Without a solid global economic base to work from, the eradication of world poverty would be an even greater task. But as one columnist recently noted, “the President of the United States recently announced a $700 billion bailout plans for banks and financial institutions. One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable. It would cost $5 billion to save six million children’s lives. World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they now tell us that action for the poorest on the planet is too expensive?

[via maggie dawn]

The MDGs represent a global partnership that has grown from the commitments and targets established at the world summits of the 1990s. Responding to the world’s main development challenges and to the calls of civil society, the MDGs promote poverty reduction, education, maternal health, gender equality, and aim at combating child mortality, AIDS and other diseases.

Set for the year 2015, the MDGs are an agreed set of goals that can be achieved if all actors work together and do their part. Poor countries have pledged to govern better, and invest in their people through health care and education. Rich countries have pledged to support them, through aid, debt relief, and fairer trade.

And across the Atlantic, a similar question was asked by Andrew Stephens-Rennie of Empire Remixed:

There’s something dirty about this. Incredibly filthy. Breaking down the $700B bailout to a per-person cost, this averages out to $2,333 per person. And yet, what did the average American receive when these companies were profitable?

The silence is deafening.

How is it that the American government races to socialize corporate debt, all the while shunning the socialization of corporate profit? Privatize profit. Socialize debt. Another spectacular example of ways the rich get richer and the poor poorer. I don’t think I’m too far off in naming this a system of oppression.

And he concluded with this: “we need to respond with clear heads. We need to find ways to root ourselves in stories of hope, not simply the tales of fear being delivered to us from Wall Street’s prophets of doom.”

Yes, which story are you in?

The Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers will seek to identify and wrestle with the powers, and forces of oppression in the world. Inspired by Ephesians 6 and Paul’s claim that our battle is not against flesh and blood, we will seek to answer the question: how can the Church exist as a distinct faith community that does not succumb to the powers that surround her, but instead offers a different way of being amidst the oppression?

EFC issued their Election Kit 2008. A pdf version can be downloaded here.

Canadians will go to the polls Tuesday, October 14, 2008. Once again, important issues are at stake in this federal election.

Canada needs strengthened families and secure marriages. Canada needs to protect its most vulnerable: children, the poor, the unborn and the disabled. Canada needs to share its blessings with the world, especially meeting commitments made to foreign relief and development work.

[link]

Conference 回來，心久久未能平復。

我們「想當然」的北美生活，對比他人，從來都自知幸福，卻不能想象是如此幸福。

當然，這樣的會議，一堆又一堆的數字，是必然的衝了又來。

數字不是問題，

問題是，

為何發生在自己的國家就不可以，發生在別人之地卻無慟於衷？

然而

我不內疚，

不內疚不代表不慚愧，

不內疚，

因為我知道內疚只會花光我僅有的氣力，

吸乾我的衝動，

世界不會因為內疚而改變，

The world will change only when the good people do something.

Something.

—————-
links:
International Justice Mission
World Vision
Masai For Africa
Make Poverty History
Absolute Leadership Development

I am heading off to the Why Everything Must Change Conference. Blogging will resume Sunday.

And no, I won’t be blogging during the conference. ;-)

Yeah, talking about meaningless and cruelness of reality… that’s why everything must change.

What will it be like if you were to hear Jesus proclaiming that “The Kingdom of God is here!”, in your world? Consider this:

Some of us have worked on Wall Street, and some of us have slept on Wall Street. We are a community of struggle. Some of us are rich people trying to escape out loneliness. Some of us are poor folks trying to escape the cold. Some of us are addicted to drugs and others are addicted to money. We are a broken people who need each other and God, for we have come to recognize the mess that we have created of our world and how deeply we suffer from the mess. Now we are working to give birth to a new society within the shell of the old. Another world is possible. Another world is necessary. Another world is already here.

Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, p.188. Quoted by Tom Sine in The New Conspirators, p.25.

To follow-up my previous post on the Political Nature of Christianity, here are some books suggested by Byron Borger from Hearts & Minds on Christian responsibility for Politics, Public Life and the Common Good.

Especially worth mentioning is Phyllis Tickle’s new book The Great great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why.

Here’s the blurb:

Rooted in the observation that massive transitions in the church happen about every 500 years, Phyllis Tickle shows readers that we live in such a time right now. She compares the Great Emergence to other “Greats” in the history of Christianity, including the Great Transformation (when God walked among us), the time of Gregory the Great, the Great Schism, and the Great Reformation.

Combining history, a look at the causes of social upheaval, and current events, The Great Emergence shows readers what the Great Emergence in church and culture is, how it came to be, and where it is going. Anyone who is interested in the future of the church in America, no matter what their personal affiliation, will find this book a fascinating exploration.

[link: bakerbooks]